Our Syllabus, Spring 2021

 

San Francisco Art Institute | Spring 2021 | CS-301AL-01

“Peace in Pieces”: Histories, Theories, and Practices of Violence and Nonviolent Resistance

Instructor: Dale Carrico; e-mail: dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.com

When/Where: Thursdays, 1-3.45pm: Online (ONL- CS1)

Course Blog: https://peaceinpiecessfai.blogspot.com/

Rough Basis for Grade: Attendance/Participation, 15%; In-Class Presentation, 15%; Reading Responses, 15%, Midterm Precis/Toulmin, 3-4pp., 15%; Symposium Presentation, 10%; Final Paper, 8-10pp., 30% (subject to contingencies)

Course Description:

The arc of the moral universe is a longing... and it bends from just us. In this course we will read canonical texts in the theory, history, and practice of nonviolent resistance and world-making. This course is provoked and inspired by stories and strategies of reconciliation connected to traditions of nonviolent politics. But is this "non-violence" simply an alternative, at hand, or is it instead another fraught artifact we are making together under duress? We will take seriously and look critically at the subtle and structural violences that ineradicably shape everyday life. We will also consider testimonies to violation, in a variety of textual forms, while simultaneously considering the cultural ideals of persuasion which often accompany definitions of violence and its limits. We will both take up and take on the many paradoxes of nonviolent activism and violent order that complicate the teaching of what passes for peace: The State as site of violence and alter-violence. Nonviolence, interfaith dialogue, and freethinking. Spontaneity and training. Democracy as assembly, resistance, occupation, and abolition. Prerequisite: Critical Studies A (CS-300) Satisfies: Critical Theory B, Critical Studies Elective, Global Cultures, Liberal Arts elective

Provisional Schedule of Meetings:  

Week One | Thursday, January 21 | Introductions 

 

Week Two | Thursday, January 28 | Consent of the Governed

The Declaration of Independence (US)

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Supplemental Texts:

Howard Zinn, Introduction to Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform

Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown

 

Week Three | Thursday, February 4 | Thoreau and Gandhi

Karuna Mantena, The Power of Nonviolence

Logan Rimel, My "Nonviolent" Stance Was Met With Heavily Armed Men

Correspondence of Count Leo Tolstoy with M. K. Gandhi

M. K. Gandhi, The Doctrine of the Sword

M.K. Gandhi, The Meaning and Practice of Ahimsa

 

Week Four | Thursday, February 11 | Suffragettes

Screen film, "Iron-Jawed Angels," dir. Katja von Garnier

Supplemental Texts:

Emily Thornberry, We Owe It To the Suffragettes To Keep Campaigning for Women

Nadine Bloch, 100 Years Later, Lessons from the Sufferin’Suffragettes

Ken Butigan, Alice Paul's Enduring Legacy of Nonviolent Action 

Jane Addams, New Ideals of Peace: Passing of the War Virtues

 

Week Five | Thursday, February 18 | King

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham City Jail

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam

Ella J. Baker, Bigger Than A Hamburger  

Supplemental Texts:

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, A Third Reconstruction

William C. Anderson, A Call for Self Defense in the Face of White Supremacy

 

Week Six | Thursday, February 25 | War

Arundhati Roy, War Is Peace

Chris Hedges, Evidence of Things Not Seen

Gene Sharp, selections from How Non-Violent Struggle Works

Marcie Smith, Gene Sharp: The Cold War Intellectual Whose Ideas Seduced the Left

 

Week Seven | Thursday, March 4 | Argument

Karl Rogers and Rogerian Synthesis

The Toulmin Schema

William May, Rising to the Occasion of Our Death (handout)

Be Water: Seven Tactics in Hong Kong’s Democracy Revolution

 

Week Eight | Thursday, March 11 | Fanon and Arendt

Frantz Fanon, Concerning Violence

Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence and “Must Eichmann Hang?”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations

 

Week Nine | Thursday, March 18 | Spring Break

Week Ten | Thursday, March 25 | A History of Violence 

Screen film, “A History of Violence,” dir. David Cronenberg

 

Week Eleven | Thursday, April 1 | A History of Violence

Discuss film, and circle back to neglected texts.

 

Week Twelve | Thursday, April 8 | Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler, Kindred

Week Thirteen | Thursday, April 15 | Decarceration Unto Abolition

Angela Davis, selections from Are Prisons Obsolete?

Supplemental: Nick Estes, Fighting For Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context

 

Week Fourteen | Thursday, April 22 | Slow Violence and Animal Abuse

Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Carol Adams, An Animal Manifesto

Carol Adams, Beastliness and a Politics of Solidarity

 

Week Fifteen | Thursday, April 29 | Symposium (Office Hour Marathon)

Final Project Symposium

 

Week Sixteen | Thursday, May 6 | Conclusions

Judith Butler, selections from The Force of Nonviolence

 

Course Objectives:

Survey canonical texts in the history, theory, and practice of nonviolent resistance: Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King, Sharp, Zinn, Davis and abolition democracy. Consider texts applying and criticizing this canonical history in contemporary contexts.

Address further questions of structural violence, marginalization, exploitation, and oppression. Consider the in/adequacy of their address within the terms of the canon of nonviolence.

Provide a basic toolkit of critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Use this instruction as an occasion to elaborate but also pressure the traditional distinction of persuasion from violence.